A quote from my old pastor that I never forgot is "the people who have the most trouble believing the Bible are those who have never read it." In my experience, he was absolutely right. Almost all atheists consider themselves an expert on religion, but almost no atheists actually understand what they're attempting to refute.
Nowhere was this more obvious than a young man who, for anonymity's sake, we'll call Chris. Noticing I had gifted a Bible to another of our classmates, he asked where he could get one, at which point I said I had a spare I could give him. He gratefully accepted, but was very confused when, upon opening it, he saw all the verse markers. "What are all these little numbers?" he asked.
Now, it's one thing if someone who openly admits they have little to no knowledge of Christianity is confused about the verse references, but this is a guy with whom I had already had several discussions on a range of topics from origins to marriage ethics to the very origins of the doctrine of Hell (he claimed it came from Dante's Inferno). In other words, this man had talked as an authority on topics he had no business discussing.
But of course, I'm talking anecdotally. So I once knew one atheist who pretended to have encyclopedic knowledge when really he didn't know the basics, that's just one case. There are millions of atheists! But Chris wasn't a one off case. There are so many atheists whose understanding of Christianity comes not from the Bible, but from culture and media. They heard it from a guy who read it in a book by a guy who says he was taught by this university that may or may not officially teach that the Bible says this, that and the other.
This can be demonstrated not just by asking them questions about basic details, but even in how they argue. For example, a common argument against Christianity is the pagan copycat theory. That is, Jesus is supposedly not unique. There are, supposedly, a number of pagan deities that share several of Jesus' attributes. 9 times out of 10, the pagan deity doesn't even have the attribute attributed to them (e.g. Mithras was supposedly born of a virgin, but in reality he was born of a rock), but even then, it's clear that copycat theorists have taken their view of Christianity from the culture, not the Bible. For example, a common attribute they ascribe to the other pagan gods is that they were born on December 25th. The problem? The Bible doesn't say when Jesus was born. So, copycat theorists are often arguing based on nothing.
There's a reason I chose the specific verse displayed in the header image. It wasn't just to highlight the existence of verse markers, but rather, I am attempting to show just how vital the Bible is. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 shows that the Bible is both essential to understanding the Christian faith and sufficient for understanding the Christian faith. If you do not know the Bible, you do not know Christianity. And yet, just like Chris, the most vocal opponents of Christianity have never picked one up. They're rejecting what they do not know!
The question for my readers right now is are you one of them? If you are an opponent of Christianity, have you actually read the Bible? I remember even as a Christian, reading it for the first time significantly changed my perspective on the faith. Things I didn't know were filled in, and things I thought I knew were replaced by truth. The irony is I may even have had a "second conversion" following my studies. If you're an unbeliever who hasn't read the Bible, I recommend reading it. It will change your perspective on Christianity forever, and in doing so, may even save your very soul.